So I Took a Bus and Walked
by Mousme
Summary: In which Castiel takes the bus for the first and last time in his existence.


Title: **So I Took a Bus and Walked**

Recipient: Pinch-hit fic for **ibroketuesday**, for the castielfest fic exchange on LJ

Characters: Castiel, a bunch of OCs

Wordcount: 2,163

Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for 5.18 through 5.22, general spoilers for the show through Season 5.

Notes/Prompt: "Castiel's experiences in those weeks he spent as a human. We didn't see enough of what that was like in canon, so - what happened to him?" I don't know what it is about this challenge that made me kind of veer off at a 45-degree angle from the prompts. I hope you still like this, lj user=ibroketuesday.

Summary: In which Castiel takes the bus for the first and last time in his existence.

Further Notes: Much, much love to my ever-patient beta, **pkwench**, who held my hand and reminded me that children don't talk like adults, among other important things. ;)

* * *

Being human is uncomfortable. It's hot, sticky and confining, and Castiel has scratched so much at the insect bite on his arm that the spot is now a sore. It both bleeds and hurts if he touches it, and it still itches. A nurse puts a band-aid over the bite, admonishes him not to scratch at it anymore.

"It'll scar if you do that," she says, as though his chest isn't a mass of scar tissue. As though he should be worried about scars.

He stares at his arm, can't quite fathom how heavy it feels. His whole body is heavy, cumbersome after everything that's happened. When he was still an angel, the flesh was nothing but a vessel, wholly under his control down to the last molecule. Now the vessel has rebelled; it's weighing him down, and it hurts. For the first two days it hurts so badly that he can do nothing but lie still and let the doctors and nurses in the hospital bustle around him and administer medication. He has injured his back, they tell him, among many other things. They thought he was dead. He can't explain to them that angels don't die all that easily. He lies very still and stares at the beige tiles on the ceiling, counting the tiny holes in them. There appears to be no discernible pattern, which he finds distressing. There used to be order to everything. On the third day he asks for a telephone and some water. They aren't given to him in that order.

He offers an apology to Dean, and he's a little surprised to find that it hurts when Dean doesn't accept it. He hears the right words, but he's thousands of years old (he feels older) and he can detect the lack of sincerity even through such inadequate means of communication. He tries to catalogue the hurt: worse than the insect bite, lesser than his spine, but it refuses to be quantified. The spaces in him ache, tiny voids which pull and tear at his insides. He tries to explain it to the nurses, but they simply give him puzzled looks, administer more morphine until he no longer cares.

"Do you have somewhere to go?" the social worker asks him on his last day, as he struggles into his clothing, negotiating the fabric as though it's a maze to which he lacks the key.

"There is always somewhere to go," he assures her, puzzled by the question. She is a kind woman, he can tell even with all of his grace burned away in that final flash of agony. He can see it in her eyes, along with the same weariness he sees in Dean's eyes, and Sam's, and Bobby's. Her name is Damiana, which means 'untamed,' he remembers. She has beautiful eyes, and grey hair to her shoulders.

"That's not what I meant. Do you have someone to go to?"

He thinks of Dean. "I have a... friend, waiting for me."

"Where?"

"He moves."

"Where is he now?"

"Going to Iowa, I believe."

He slides one arm into the sleeve of his trench coat, and his fingers catch in the cuff for a moment. He shrugs into the other sleeve, struggles with the collar until Damiana reaches out and straightens it for him. He has lost his suit jacket, and his shirt is torn at the elbow. He's never bothered to learn how to knot his tie so that it lies straight. She fishes in her purse, pulls out a small canvas wallet and hands it to him.

"The hospital will pay for cab fare within the city. Use this," she points to a small card labelled 'voucher' in the wallet. "Do you know how?"

He shakes his head, and she explains it, patiently. He feels like a child, standing at his Father's knee again, and her words flow over and through him. There is money in the wallet which doesn't belong to him, and he points this out to her. She smiles, ever-patient.

"You'll need it to get to Iowa. For bus fare, and food. You can't take those pills on an empty stomach."

Castiel reaches into his pocket, closes his fist around the tiny plastic bottle, hears the pills rattle in the container. He is not supposed to take the pills for another three hours and thirty-seven minutes. The hospital served him toast and very watery orange juice, although since he has never had orange juice before he isn't entirely certain that it's not meant to be watery all the time. It's liquid, after all, and does that not mean it must contain mostly water? He just somehow expected it to taste more... orangey. There is money in the wallet which doesn't belong to him, and yet it's his to do with as he pleases, and he feels something strange happen to his throat, and his eyes sting.

"I..."

Damiana takes his free hand and wraps it more firmly around the wallet. "It's fine. Just pay it forward."

He clears his throat, looks up at her through his lashes. He should thank her. The words are quite simple, and he has uttered them before, but they seem inadequate, too light for a gesture that weighs so much. "I don't understand that reference."

She smiles, then, bright and happy, like some sort of bird, he thinks, about to burst into song. "It just means that you should do something good for someone else some day down the line, when you can."

He nods. "I can do that."

He uses three-quarters of the money to purchase a ticket on a bus named after a breed of racing dog, tries not to see anything ominous in riding something with the word 'hound' in it. Angels aren't bred for superstition, and he is not entirely human. Not yet. At first he mistakenly believes the seats to be more comfortable than those of Dean's car, but after a few hours he realizes his error. He shifts his weight, trying to ease the pain in his back. The bus hums with life, with people talking in low voices, listening to music —tuning out the rest of the world, reading, sleeping fitfully. He leans against the headrest, looks through the window of the bus at the world going by. It's going faster and more slowly than he remembers, the road disappearing beneath the wheels of the bus. The grass and trees blur together, green and brown and yellow, and they disappear from view, cease to exist except in memory. Castiel is accustomed to travelling without regard for the passage of time. He remembers a conversation with Lucifer, in which he described travelling by car as slow and confining, but it's nothing compared to this.

There is a young girl knitting a few rows down from him, sitting by the aisle. She's dressed in a brown hoodie and a brown knitted skirt, and the purple yarn she's using to knit what looks like a tube of some kind sits in stark contrast in her lap. She's entirely absorbed in her task, red-rimmed glasses perched on the end of her nose. Every now and then her companion, a boy with rings pierced through one nostril, bends to say something into her ear, and she laughs almost silently, lips slightly parted in mirth. Once she mock-threatens to stab him with a knitting needle. He is never going to learn her name, and he thinks it might be a blessing.

Castiel has to change buses four times. By the time he clambers aboard the fifth bus his back feels as though molten lead has been poured down his spine. He perches stiffly in his seat, fingers the dwindling bottle of pills in his pocket. It's been thirty-two hours, and there are at least four more hours ahead of him. His stomach gurgles, reminding him just how long it's been since he spent his last five dollars on food. It will have to wait until he finds Sam and Dean. He eases himself against the back of his seat, tries to will his back to stop hurting, but like everything else, he no longer has control over this.

"Where are you going?"

The question startles him, and he turns in his seat, wincing as the movement jars his spine. "I beg your pardon?"

His interlocutor is a small child, a girl, sitting across the aisle from him. She has brown hair and brown eyes and an olive complexion to her heart-shaped face. She's dressed in pink overalls with a unicorn on the breast, and her pink t-shirt is decorated with rhinestones. Castiel thinks Dean would not care for her attire. She huffs at him, as though exasperated that he wasn't paying enough attention to hear her question the first time.

"I said, where are you going?"

"Oh. I am going to Davenport. Where are you going?"

"I'm going to Des Moines with my Mommy. What's wrong with you?"

Her mother is sitting next to her, he realizes belatedly, looking like a taller, older version of the girl. She turns her head, speaks sharply. "Susan! Don't bother the man. I'm sorry," she says to him over the girl's head. "She's sometimes too curious for her own good."

Castiel shakes his head carefully. "It's all right. I hurt my back," he chooses to simplify the explanation for Susan's benefit.

"Oh." The girl pauses to think about it, sucking on the end of a pigtail. She has pink barrettes holding the stray wisps of her hair in place. "Once, my Daddy hurt his back. He was lifting a fridge. He had to lie on the floor and take pills. How come you don't have pills?"

"I do," he assures her, unsure why he is attempting to explain himself at all. "I have to wait until I have something to eat with them."

She thinks about that as well. He thinks she must not be much older than four or perhaps five years of age. "Don't you have food?"

"Not at the moment. I will find some when we stop." It feels wrong, lying to a child, but the alternative would be to explain that he has no money with which to acquire food.

"But we just got on the bus. It's going to be hours before we get there!" Susan is horrified. "It's going to hurt!" Before he can reassure her that it's fine, she's tugging on her mother's sleeve. "Mommy, can we give him a sandwich?"

The girl's mother gives him an appraising look, and he feels blood rushing to his face. He's never experienced embarrassment before, and it's not an emotion he finds he enjoys. Then she pulls a pink backpack out from under her seat and places it in Susan's lap. "It's a very nice thought, honey. Why don't you ask him first, though?"

Susan smiles brightly at him. "Would you like a sandwich? It's peanut butter and grape jelly. And we have juice boxes, too. Daddy had to take his pills with a drink when he hurt his back."

"No, thank you," he manages, even as he feels his back seizing up again. "It's very nice of you, but I couldn't possibly."

Her face falls, and Castiel suddenly feels even more wretched, although he didn't think it was possible. "But your back hurts," she points out reasonably. He looks to her mother for help, and finds none. She's looking on, amused.

"Please take it. She'll go on about it for the whole trip otherwise, and it's a good opportunity for her to learn about sharing with strangers in need."

The sandwich is sticky, and cleaves to his palate, but the juice —grape-flavoured— goes a long way to quenching his thirst, and after several interminable minutes the muscles in his back begin to relax under the influence of the painkillers. He smiles at Susan, head swimming a bit. "You are a very kind soul," he murmurs, and she giggles.

"You're funny."

He sleeps for the next four hours, more exhausted than he thought, and awakens just as the bus pulls into Davenport. He pushes himself stiffly to his feet, his right leg tingling a bit, as though a tiny electric current is running through it. Susan is fast asleep, head pillowed in her mother's lap. Without stopping to think about it, he reaches down, places a hand over her chest.

"Blessed art thou amongst all others," he murmurs, almost to himself. Half-forgotten words spring to his lips. "May our words come forth from gratitude and fill us with joy. Glory to our Father, from whom all blessings flow."

Then he turns and makes his way slowly off the bus.


End file.
